February 15, 2010 – 11:44 pm
In an article just published in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria argues that sympathy for al-Qaeda, and for the most extreme forms of terrorist jihad, is diminishing throughout much of the Muslim world — due in large part to al-Qaeda’s violent excesses against Muslims themselves, particularly in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Certainly the relentless campaign [...]
February 5, 2010 – 11:56 am
As I mentioned in the previous post, the Kafkaesque trial of Geert Wilders has been postponed while the schedule is worked out for the testimony of the few witnesses he will be allowed to call. It appears the trial will not resume until July at the earliest.
A discussion of all this is underway at View [...]
February 4, 2010 – 5:53 pm
Yesterday the judge in the free-speech trial of Geert Wilders ruled that only three of the eighteen witnesses Mr. Wilders had hoped to call to testify about the true nature of Islam will be permitted to appear, and must do so behind closed doors. There may now be a long delay while these appearances [...]
December 2, 2009 – 9:17 pm
I watched the President’s speech last night. It was not encouraging. It had something for everyone: escalation for the hawks; an exit date for the doves; the usual rot about “distorting and defiling a great religion”, to keep the Muslims off the streets; some bean-counting for the frugal; some American exceptionalism for the true believers; [...]
November 28, 2009 – 12:12 am
A recent item in the Long War Journal informs us that it appears that al-Qaeda is consolidating a Waziristan-style presence in Eastern Syria. Nothing happens in Syria without the consent of the Ba’ath Party, and the story does indeed tell us that there appears to be a working partnership in place between al-Qaeda and former [...]
November 20, 2009 – 7:24 pm
I know I said I’d lay off this stuff, but what the heck. In today’s edition of the WSJ’s Best of the Web, James Taranto offers the following:
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November 20, 2009 – 6:14 pm
Our recent post on the need for cultures to have, like any organism, an effective “immune system” has led to an interesting discussion with our friend Kevin Kim. It continues here.
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November 17, 2009 – 9:14 pm
I’m working late again this week, and have had no time to write. But reader JK has sent along a link to an informed and thoughtful post about the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the criminal court here in New York City. Here is an excerpt:
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November 15, 2009 – 5:51 pm
The Fort Hood massacre has got people talking, and it even seems suddenly to have dawned on a lot of people — as a startlingly new idea — that perhaps there might even be appropriate limits to our liberal infatuation with multiculturalism and radical non-discrimination: that “diversity” might not only not [...]
November 11, 2009 – 12:16 am
President Obama gave a speech today at Fort Hood. You can read the transcript here.
In his remarks he referred to Nidal Hasan’s murderous rampage as “incomprehensible”. To him it may actually be, which is in itself a harrowing thought. For most of the rest of us, it is anything but.
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November 6, 2009 – 12:37 am
The topic of the day is obviously the massacre at Fort Hood. The news agencies have rather a hot potato in the essential fact of this story, namely that an apparently radicalized Muslim, a member of our own armed forces, launched a murderous attack upon servicemen who were about to be deployed to fight fundamentalist [...]
October 30, 2009 – 10:02 am
On the front page of today’s Times there’s a photo from Pakistan: Hillary Clinton — the West’s most powerful diplomat, an inspiration to women everywhere, and an essential symbol and embodiment of Western liberty, strength, and confidence — in a Muslim headscarf. Again.
Oh well, at least it will be a few [...]
October 12, 2009 – 6:37 pm
Here, with a hat tip to Dymphna at Gates of Vienna, are some video clips that should be of interest to all: Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant testifying before the Canadian Parliament’s Justice and Human Rights Committee, as part of an inquiry into the inquisitorial powers of the Canadian Human Rights Commission regarding censorship of [...]
October 11, 2009 – 4:29 pm
A commenter on our recent post about President Obama’s Nobel Prize disapproved of my saying that Mr. Obama had made, in his Cairo speech to the Muslim world, “fawning salaams and obeisances before Islam”. At the time of the speech I had refrained from dwelling on this, preferring instead to compliment Mr. Obama on an [...]
October 6, 2009 – 11:28 pm
President Obama is grappling with a momentous and extremely difficult choice in Afghanistan. It is a grim situation, and there are really no good options; there is also no consensus amongst his advisers, or the punditry at large, about what we ought to do. Reader JK, who always has his ear to the ground, has [...]
September 3, 2009 – 8:57 pm
We haven’t linked to anything over at Gates of Vienna in a while, but here is an excellent overview by Baron Bodissey of the many fronts upon which the ancient struggle between Islam and the West is now unfolding. The is a great deal more to this conflict than flamboyant acts of terror and costly [...]
August 20, 2009 – 2:13 pm
In response to a recent post about the persistent backwardness of the Arab world, commenters and correspondents have suggested that the problem is not Islam itself, but the “culture of honor” that prevails amongst Arabs (and which has been shown also to be at work in the American South, with arguably similar retrograde effects). Non-Arab [...]
August 13, 2009 – 12:02 am
Our friend H. Jeffery Hodges, who writes thoughtfully about the problem that Islam poses to the rest of the world, has been doing so again lately. In posts here, here, and here, he discusses the book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, by the Weekly Standard’s Christopher Caldwell.
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August 6, 2009 – 11:40 pm
According to reports, a U.S. airstrike may actually have killed the Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, the de facto ruler of South Waziristan. Confirmation is still pending, but if true this is news that will be received with grim satisfaction in many quarters.
Baitullah was one of the most brutal and dangerous men in the region, [...]
We see in today’s news that Pakistan has announced that it is in contact with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and would like to arrange negotiations between Omar and the US.
Have we learned nothing? What possible value could such negotiations offer? What conceivable compromise could there be between the Taliban and a secular [...]
French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday that the burqa — the head-to-toe garment worn by some Muslim women — is “not welcome” in France, and the French National Assembly is now preparing an inquiry into whether the enshrouding of women to shield them from the view of men other than their [...]
The Pakistani army’s new offensive against the Taliban has been underway for several weeks now, and it does appear that they have applied considerable heat. In today’s Wall Street Journal we find an article by Fouad Ajami in which the noted Mideast scholar weighs in on the struggle for the survival of the secular Pakistani [...]
The Taliban, responding to Pakistan’s latest attempt to flush them out of Swat, has demanded that all government officials in the area must leave at once, or their families will be “arrested”. In today’s news we read that:
On Wednesday, [Taliban spokesman Muslim] Khan denied reports from many refugees emerging from the Swat Valley that Taliban [...]
We note that President Obama is planning an address to the Muslim world, to be given from Cairo on the fourth of June. I wonder what he will say. Probably it will be the usual bromides about respect, with reassurances that we still regard the the virulent form the religion has taken in a great [...]
The dazed and tottering government of Pakistan, humiliated by its attempt to appease the Taliban in Swat, is now making a conspicuous display of indignation. It has nullified the pigeonhearted agreement it signed with the vile jihadists, and has instructed the army to head back up there and have another go.
They will no doubt push [...]
April 24, 2009 – 10:56 pm
According to this item at CNN, the Pakistani government is reporting that the Taliban have completely withdrawn from their recent conquests in the Buner province near Islamabad. This is absurd, of course, as no advancing army would willingly abandon territory they have won except as a tactical feint, and given that Pakistan has seen fit [...]
The situation in Pakistan, which we commented on yesterday, continues to deteriorate, and appears to be creating broader alarm. Today Fareed Zakaria, interviewed by CNN, gave a grim assessment:
CNN: Beyond their proximity to the capital, what makes this such a dire situation?
Zakaria: Well, I read that the spokesman for the Taliban told The Associated Press [...]
April 22, 2009 – 11:18 am
It should come as no surprise to any that the Taliban, emboldened by its defeat of the moribund government of Pakistan over control of the valley of Swat, now seeks to seize the initiative in its campaign to impose its totalitarian and sadistic Islamic theocracy upon the entire nation.
Last week the architect of the Red [...]
April 17, 2009 – 10:51 am
From today’s New York Times: a remarkable account of a dramatic nighttime encounter between US troops and Taliban fighters. Here.
April 17, 2009 – 10:06 am
The collapse of secular government in Pakistan continues apace; the jihadist cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, imprisoned for his role in the uprising and siege at the Red Mosque, was freed on Thursday by that nation’s Supreme Court.
At CNN we read:
Addressing Friday prayers in the battle-scarred mosque, Aziz said he was willing to see more blood [...]
April 13, 2009 – 10:04 pm
In case there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about the Taliban’s victory over the Pakistani government in the northwestern valley of Swat, President Zardari today formalized his nation’s abject surrender with a signed document.
This means that the imposition of the Taliban’s barbaric totalitarian theocracy, a central feature of which is the sexually perverted and [...]
Gates of Vienna has posted a video of Geert Wilders’ speech to the David Horowitz Freedom Society in Beverly Hills last weekend. Wilders, as you probably know, has been demonized, not only by Islamists, but also by his own government, that of Britain, and well-intentioned but myopic cultural relativists everywhere, for his commitment to the [...]
Recently the crumbling government of Pakistan handed over the valley of Swat to the Taliban. For those of you who were unaware of what the consequences of that surrender would be — or who need reminding that there is abroad in this world a perverse and despicable religious ideology, as vile an abomination [...]
February 28, 2009 – 12:25 am
In today’s email, a friend has sent me some photographs of angry Muslims demonstrating on the street in what appears to be London. They are carrying signs, glowering menacingly, brandishing their fists, and shouting. The messages they carry are clear enough, if rather unimaginatively monotonous:
SLAY THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM. BUTCHER THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM. [...]
February 24, 2009 – 11:14 am
With a double hat-tip to Dymphna and the Baron at Gates of Vienna, here are several items of interest on the clash-of-civilizations front.
First, Geert Wilders is in town, fresh from being turned away at the door by the supine and craven British Government. He paid a visit to TV host Glenn Beck, and [...]
February 17, 2009 – 11:02 pm
For those interested in the mortal struggle between Islam and the West (viz. those with the wit to acknowledge that such a struggle even exists), it’s been an eventful few days. The biggest story has been that the government of Pakistan has now surrendered the valley of Swat to the Taliban. The story in the [...]
February 10, 2009 – 8:35 pm
Apparently the British government has now refused entry to the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Wilders, who has made a name for himself with his outspoken criticism of Islam, and by his vociferous opposition to its increasing presence and influence in the dangerously multiculturalist West, has lived under police protection in Holland since the release of [...]
January 15, 2009 – 2:17 pm
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Ethiopians, who have been fighting Islamists in Somalia, have given up.
January 14, 2009 – 11:21 pm
What next for Israel? Thomas Friedman, writing in today’s Times, suggests that Hamas will be chastened by the fury of Israel’s assault, as, he says, Hezbollah was after the battle of 2006.
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January 7, 2009 – 4:55 pm
Here’s an encouraging and heartwarming item from across the pond, courtesy of Gates Of Vienna.
December 10, 2008 – 11:33 pm
My insider sources tell me there is an “uptick” in the “chatter” lately; this is their way of saying that the murmurous rustle of nefarious voices has got louder, or more insistent, or something, and that it seems more likely than usual that some horrible and murderous attack might be imminent.
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December 3, 2008 – 10:27 pm
Thomas Friedman, in his column in today’s Times, notes the usual silence from the world’s “moderate” Muslims in the wake of yet another despicable act of mass murder in the name of their religion.
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December 2, 2008 – 10:29 pm
In yesterday’s Times the conservative columnist William Kristol notes how reluctant some are to acknowledge the Islamic roots — and explicitly Islamic agenda — of the terrorists who attacked Mumbai last week.
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November 17, 2008 – 10:30 pm
We hear a lot these days about inter-religious dialogue, and I suppose it’s a nice enough idea, in a surreal sort of way. It’s even, perhaps, a plausible one, as long as we are talking about, for example, a dialogue between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians — which would surely be a [...]
September 16, 2008 – 12:09 am
Fed up with those pesky Jews? Here are some tips for reducing your Zion footprint.
September 9, 2008 – 11:36 am
Today’s Times carries on the Op-Ed page an item by foreign-affairs correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg, in which he makes a grim prediction: a 10 to 50 percent likelihood of a nuclear strike against America by our Islamic foes within the next ten years.
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September 7, 2008 – 11:46 pm
In today’s New York Times Magazine is an article, by respected Mideast hand Dexter Filkins, about the realities “on the ground” in the tribal areas of Pakistan — a region that belongs, in any realistic sense, not to Pakistan at all, but to the brutal and illiterate warlords of the Taliban. Filkins makes [...]
There’s a piece in today’s Times Magazine that is so breathtakingly misbegotten that I am reduced nearly to speechlessness. I had thought of giving it a thorough, line-by-line fisking, but as blogger Steve Sailer also realized upon reading it, it simply stands on it own, a fantastic self-caricature. It is, essentially, an argument that European [...]
From reader JK comes a link to an article about a growing tension in the Persian Gulf. No, it isn’t between the Sunnis and the Shi’a, or between US diplomats and the Iraqi parliament, but between Islamic fundamentalists and those in the region who, having attracted enormous foreign investment, and having used it to build [...]
The nation of Indonesia is often cited as an exemplar of a “moderate” Islamic society (though of course it has had its share of Muslim extremism and terror). It is far from a being a tolerant, pluralistic society along Western lines, however; though one is “free” to worship, only five religions are on the list [...]